The activists have proposed to make a museum of the house where the outstanding aircraft constructor Ihor Sikorsky used to live. The Ministry of Defense, which owns the abandoned premises at 15b Yaroslaviv Val Street responded to the proposal immediately. At a joint meeting it was decided to return at first the house into legal possession of the department, because in 2000 the Ministry of Defense gave it out for 50-year-long leasing to the International Charity Foundation “Ihor Sikorsky Museum of Aeronautics and Aviation.” However, the foundation totally neglected monument, which is why the Ministry of Defense plans to break the lease agreement in court. The first trial will take place on November 9.
Further the creative part will begin and the design of the museum will be developed. The house has been empty since the beginning of the 1980s. The windows have no glass, there are cracks on the walls, and pigeons and sparrows seem to have become its regular residents. How to turn this abandoned local monument of architecture into a full-fledged museum? Historian Vitalii Kovalynsky is sure that everything can be accomplished if there is will and money. He thinks that it is a shame that Kyiv does not have such a museum yet.
“In 1914, when Sikorsky was only 25, he designed his Illya Muromets, the world’s first bomber, on which he came from St. Petersburg to Kyiv, and there were 15 models of helicopters of C series,” the historian adds. In the US the inventor is called Mr. Helicopter, and American presidents still travel on the helicopters he designed. It is a shame that we don’t have a museum dedicated to the genius of aircraft. The Kyivites hope that soon the misdeed will be rectified and the doors to a modern museum with a history will be opened.
